Saturday, April 11, 2015

Justice delayed is injustice just fine, it seems

Why are North Carolina's two Republican senators not doing anything to fill a vacancy on the state's federal court bench? Huffington Post reports:

There's a seat on U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina that's been empty for 3,387 days. That's more than nine years, and it has no nominee.

Burr avoided questions from The Huffington Post last year about why he was blocking a previous nominee for the slot, Jennifer May-Parker. His obstruction of May-Parker was particularly puzzling, given that he previously recommended her to Obama.

A Burr spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the hold-up for filling the seat, and on whether Burr plans to recommend a nominee soon. A request for comment also was not returned from Burr's home-state counterpart, freshman Sen. Thom Tillis (R).

The Judiciary Committee, with 18 members, is in charge of conducting hearings prior to the Senate votes on confirmation of federal judges (including Supreme Court justices) nominated by the president. In recent years, this role has made the committee increasingly a point of contention, with numerous party-line votes and standoffs over which judges should be approved.

Maybe Tillis just doesn't feel there need to be any law enforcement officers at the federal level when there are senators like him to do the job. He has announced he plans to block all civilian appointments to Pentagon jobs over some potential lost pork in North Carolina; has helped hold the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general hostage in a fit of pique after the departing AG sued Tillis over his voter-suppression law; and complained when Governor McCrory sued to overturn Tillis' law to let North Carolina legislators appoint a corporate-cozy coal ask cleanup commission (he got his head handed back to him on that one).And Tillis believes federal courts have no business intervening in marriage issues, unless it is his lawsuit to try and overturn marriage equality, for which taxpayers have been getting soaked- for $400 per hour- by National Organization for Marriage sinecurist and constitutional quack John C. Eastman.